Yes, the best thing that has happened to the Future Windows Phone is the Zune HD.  ZuneBoards have released a hack that allows applications to be run directly on the Win CE framework.

What this does is gets the applications out of the sandbox that they usually run in.  It will allow them to run faster and with the 3D graphics accelerator.  Because Windows Phone 7 will run on XNA and that is what has been hacked on the Zune HD, we can speculate that it will be easily hacked when Windows Phone is released.

The next question is whether or not applications will actually be developed without XNA?  Hopefully they will.  Only time will tell, though…  Obviously they will not make it to the Marketplace but hopefully they create some other place to sell them.  These apps will be the better of the two so I really don’t see them being all that free, meaning that they will need a Marketplace of their own.

Who knows, maybe Microsoft will want to cash in on these as well.  I wouldn’t hold my breath but it may be bigger than their Marketplace apps.

[wmpoweruser]